I've tried Dragons Tale, tried malting my own sorghum even. It's still sorghum. So next I tried oat flakes fro, the health food store. The beer had possibilities, but what a glop of oat meal ended up in the compost bin!

I ordered Malted oats from Northern Brewers. And roasted some in the oven, on cookie sheets. @350° Remove at varying times to get different colors/flavors, and one pan was wetted before roasting, trying for a biscuit flavor. My Ideal beer is Flat Ass Tired.

Yeast is Nottingham, and hops usually EKG, as per my FAT recipe. I'm not one for citrus flavor. If I want beer, I'll drink beer. If I want citrus, I'll eat Marmalade. Which I do, especially over chocolate ice cream. YUM!

Slow to settle all the oats, took a month in primary. A couple weeks in second, then kegged and force carb. Better from day one than sorghum beer, but not in the FAT family. Still and all, real beer. And drinkable by other beer lovers, which sorghum is NOT. Pic next to the Corny I cut down to fit the refrigerator shelf. (A TIG in the garage comes in handy.) Seems the head has gone away. Oh well, still got good mouth feel.

And this recipe is CHEAP, because sugar instead of base malt cost 1/4 as much. Since I've become sensitive to glutens I've been making lots of fruit wines. They use LOTS of sugar, to good effect. Cost $1/gallon if I pick the fruit off the neighbor's trees. Wonderful stuff, but it just ain't beer when beer you need.

Comments?

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So far, I've had more experience thinking than I've had brewing....you don't think they are mutually exclusive, do you?

4 lbs. of table sugar? I have to say I'm a bit skeptical; I just can't see the final product tasting all that great. Although perhaps better than sorghum ale...maybe. That much sugar in beer is a much different proposition than making fruit wine.

Why the rice hulls? Malted oats have TONS of husk material as I'm sure you've noticed. I personally wouldn't have used the sugar either - I've never found sugar (more than about 1lb) to do anything good for beer.

I've made a (nearly) all-oat beer before, and I quite like it. Definitely 'real' beer. I would definitely play around with it a lot more if I had an aversion to gluten. Crystal Oat Malt, anyone?

Also, there are serious concerns for those that are sensitive to gluten due to cross-contamination on the malted oats. Unless the oats are certified to be gf, then they almost certainly spent their time malting, kilning and milling while rolling around with a bunch of wheat.

While I agree that oats can make a better tasting beer, until we get a gluten-free maltster then I'm not willing to risk it.

I suppose it depends on what the level of sensitivity to gluten is. Certainly it would be 'low-gluten' if not 'gluten-free'

If you were making it for yourself and were comfortable taking that risk-fine. But if others, who had celiac or a gluten sensitivity, were going to be drinking this- making a beer that is "low-gluten" is not an option. To be safe it should be truly gluten-free.

Additionally, oats are frequently processed near wheat, barley and other grains, such that they become contaminated with other glutens. Because of this, the FAO's Codex Alimentarius Commission officially lists them as a crop containing gluten. Oats from Ireland and Scotland, where less wheat is grown, are less likely to be contaminated in this way

Also while Oats would be awesome to have GF, can you really make a good beer with just oats? Most of the Oat Beer recipies I've seen use at absolute most 25% Oats and the rest is barley.

It would taste a lot like biscuits or bread...you would probably want to thin out the taste with some sugar. I really think casebrew would be on to something great if we could get access to malted oats that were gluten free.

EDIT: I have reports that it actually tastes much like barley, just lighter. Maybe thinning is not the right approach. There are also beers that use this as the base grain.